Carcass Trade (36 page)

Switchie, smiling, faking me out, danced from one side to the other. “Run!” he whispered. “Run!” The Gigli saw, held through its ring by his good finger, bounced in its springy energy.

Just as he advanced on me, I heard Simon's voice. “Let her go, man.”

Softly, without turning around, Switchie said, “Fuck yourself, joe. You don't like it, leave.” Switchie moved left, unblocking my view, and then we both saw at the same time little Simon with his big boa draped across his shoulders.

Dragonwick's forward length dipped off the right shoulder but rose again, stargazing, as he earlier described. The boa's head balanced above Simon's own and traveled side by side like an East Indian dancer's. Flick, the tongue. Then Simon lifted the snake like a set of flexible barbells and heaved it at Switchie.

In a flash, the thing wrapped itself around Switchie like nothing I'd ever seen. His arm that held the wire stuck out, the ring still looped on his finger. He fell completely to his knees from the weight and the surprise, and in a moment seemed clothed in a pale-green dressing gown. He'd become a snake totem, his face not even visible, so snake-embraced was he. I stood with my mouth open, and then the thing toppled over. The snake uncovered a golden patch of hair and with it a strangled scream. Switchie's eyes bulged. Then the boa's head rose, back, back, and struck forward like a fist. It came back again, its jaws open wide like a catcher's mitt, and in an instant fangs clamped across Switchie's face.

Switchie's free hand, which still clung to the wire whip, flailed wildly. Each time the wire struck and retreated it ripped across the snake. Simon was yelling, “Stop! Stop struggling. I'll get her,” but the beast spasmed smaller and tighter before our eyes. Simon the Dragonmeister stood in horror. His eyes were riveted to the hand that tore at his pet's green carpet of scales.

“God, get it off him!” I yelled.

Simon moved forward and chopped karatelike at his pet just at the base of its blunt head. The snake released, reared, and bit again. The fangs tore through Switchie's cheeks and across his mouth, losing their grip and leeching onto the side of his head. Then the snake snuggled, until a small stream of red eased from Switchie's stoppered throat. He had ceased any sound. I don't know if his eyes' last light admitted the sheen of a helicopter belly as it crested the tops of the swirling eucalyptus, or if they saw a brighter light.

I slid to the ground as the sand tornadoed about us, and put my arm over my eyes. My blouse was tearing away with the chopper wind. I clutched it, and when I rose and turned and dropped my arm, I saw Simon nearly blowing off his own small feet, clubbing his thighs with dreadful grief.

Joe and I sat with Miranda Robertson and Les Fedders in an interview room the next day at noon. Her hair was folded into a white snood, one of those net things from the forties. She wore a black linen jacket, cream slacks, and shoes, and could have passed for a lawyer. How was it that this was the woman who sat on a softail only two days before?

I asked, “Why did you report the car stolen?”

“Because I thought it was. I let her use it to go to the Ontario airport. She flew up to Fresno for something, was coming back the same day.”

“What's in Fresno?”

“Monty asked her to. She needed money, Monty needed something delivered to Fresno. Her husband usually made the trips, or Switchie, but her husband hadn't come home for three days. When she didn't show either, and Monty wasn't telling me anything, I reported it stolen.”

“There was a gun in the car. Was it yours?”

“No.”

“A little Sundance Boa, with the number drilled off in two places. You're sure?”

“I don't know how to use a gun.”

“Was Arleta afraid of somebody?”

“Of course she was afraid of somebody. Her husband was gone. She didn't know then that he was dead, but I think she guessed it. Switchie killed Rollie because he ripped him off, and that meant he ripped
Monty
off, and Switchie wouldn't get his commission.” She moved in the chair, and I thought I caught a faint whiff of purple Zac.

Les said, “This Arleta. She have breast implants?” He looked at me, I gave him a glare, and his face fell into deep folds.

Miranda shifted in her chair and said, “Rollie was a jerk. Arleta, she was pretty once, but she was fortysomething and losing it and didn't quite know how to piece it all together, you know? Like she would wear T-shirts with big holes cut in them like a teenager and her figure wasn't all that great to begin with, kind of straight up and down like a board. She did something about it, I mean she was getting lippoed and lifted and . . .” Miranda looked at me, and I slipped one hand onto her chair back.

“But fortysomething's forty something, and she didn't know how to take care of her teeth and her hair was dyed too black and she had fat knees. But she was pretty, honest, in her own way. She could laugh at herself. I liked that.”

“The husband . . . ?” Joe asked.

“He made fun of her all the time. I think that's why she did all that stuff to herself.”

Why did you? I thought, and was mad at Nathan.

We kept Miranda there for an hour before she asked for coffee. At the break, I walked with her to the rest room, and it was there that she told me about Robert, how he fit into the whole thing. I had her repeat it for the video when we got back to the interview room, and she did well considering the emotional complexities involved.

At one point Les Fedders stopped her and asked, “So let me get this straight. Switchie was into smuggling stuff for your husband. Or for Monty?”

“Robert and Switchie owned stock in the biotech company. But they couldn't do diddly without Monty's product. Pork producers pay them all sorts of money under the table. Robert was taking product to the Chinese.”

I looked at Les, and Les looked at Joe, and finally I said, “Miranda, did you know a man named Quillard Satterlee?”

“Never heard of him.”

“Small, white hair. Beard. Rode a red—”

“The red pan? Oh yeah. Monty hates that bike. Way too much chrome.” Then, as if I were watching the time-lapsed unfolding of a rose, I saw the conquest of understanding on Miranda's face. Her eyes fixed on me. “He's the one,” she whispered.

“The one what?” Les asked.

“The one . . . the one. . . .”

I said, “The one Simon hauled off in his truck?”

She nodded. Two bright red spots showed on her cheeks.

Joe said, “He was a customs agent.”

“I heard Monty on the phone to Switchie. He said, ‘He was a fucking
fed
?' like that, and I thought he was talking about Arleta's husband, but after a while I knew it wasn't, and I suppose I didn't want to know any more. I just closed my ears. I heard Monty call Simon and ask to use his truck. Over
pigs
.
Pigs!
”

We let her compose herself, and then I said, “We still don't know why Switchie would murder Arleta.”

“What if he was after
me?
” Miranda said. “It
was
my car.”

Les Fedders said, “We still don't know if Switchie did murder Arleta. Maybe Monty did.”

“Oh no, oh no,” Miranda said. “He'd never do that. Not Monty. It was Switchie going after the money Rollie lifted, I'll bet, thinking she had it. Not Monty. He couldn't do a thing like that.”

Joe said, “We got a whole lot of people betraying other people here, don't you think? Under the circumstances, who can you trust?”

And Miranda's face burned even brighter.

The autopsy took place without me. You don't do the ones that seem too personal unless you have a stomach of tempered steel. Even for Switchie, I'd allow him his privacy. Switchie. Brained by a boa, so to speak. I felt sorry about his fate. Or tried to. The manner, but not the outcome.

As for Simon's snake, she fared well. Either the chopper vibration made her think of one humongous ground squirrel, or Simon's blow unkinked her, for she slid off Switchie and winnowed away into the chaparral none the worse for wear. A month later, I read about another constrictor who killed his owner. The man had failed to wash his hands after handling a guinea pig.

Whatever had happened to my humorless deputies? They continued to be humorless, to the point that when I saw them the afternoon of Switchie's demise, I thought they were on the brink of suicide. They'd been driving around in circles trying to find me, the cellular phone wouldn't work, and then, because neither of them was old enough to have much experience with manual transmissions, they gave too much clutch to the temperamental repair truck and soaked the spark plugs into a righteous stall. They called for aerial from a pay phone.

That night, still trembling, I called Nathan and told him his Miranda was found. From there on, it was up to him what he wanted to do about it.

Two nights later, L along with Joe Sanders, my pal Ray Vega and still another girlfriend (this time a blonde named Missy), and Agent Christine Vogel, went out to a bar in San Bernardino where rowdy female customers take off their bras through their blouse sleeves and throw them over the chandeliers.

I had a Fuzzy Navel and two of Christine's Widows, and let Joe drive me home. Captain Exner said to call him the next morning, but I passed in favor of corn.

Corn is dirty work. The ribbed leaves, blasted with road goo and grimy jet fallout, will wipe you with rough black dust. Anywhere else I wouldn't be able to pick corn at the beginning of June, but farmers in Southern California force crops into false seasons. I was 260 paces from the access road—you pace off or you lose your way. The corn stalks towered overhead. Though I was between two busy freeways, nothing but a mean eagle could find you here.

The wire handle of the bucket dug mercilessly into my finger creases. I set the bucket down for a moment and still picked more. I'd found a good spot the paid pickers had missed, and though I'd been there for more than the two-hour limit for volunteers, I didn't want to leave. No room in the pail, I speared two ears in each shirt pocket, and one down the elastic tunnel where three days ago my microphone had been. Loaded this way, I could have passed for a chesty scarecrow.

The sun beat hotly through the morning haze. I was sealed in sweat and beginning to itch badly from the fuzzies, those nearly invisible hairs corn leaves give off. I started working my way back to the road, off-balance with the weight of the bucket, barely able to prevent a turned ankle on clods the size of saucers. But then I'd find myself straddling rows instead of pacing forward, peering through the silk-sounding leaves at the next row. Everywhere I looked I spied a missile without worms in the kernels or aphid gunk turning the tassels to slime. I wanted to announce my find to the other volunteers, but in this large field they couldn't hear.

I knelt by the white plastic bucket and adjusted the cobs so they'd efficiently fit, two dozen green cigars in a clown's mouth. Enough. But the stalks were so laden, and I was so greedy for more. I stacked the corn in a pyramid then, like pipe, and promised myself to pace off carefully so I could find them again after emptying my bucket of treasure in the waiting truck. I straddled the next row and looked. Firm cobs everywhere. Grasping one, I tested diameter and sponginess. Fat and firm, that's the ticket. That's what the Beulah Land lady told me the first day I picked, only she winked with a secret, and I laughed.

That evening I had Mrs. Langston over for a shrimp salad and very fresh corn, and gave Farmer a stripped cob to roll all over the kitchen floor until he figured out it could actually be something good to eat and broke it in a million pieces.

The next Monday afternoon I got a summons. Doug Forster and I were huddled over his desktop analyzing the language of a section of the evidence code that took up thirteen pages. Doug's first court appearance in which he'd have to testify as an expert witness was Wednesday, and he was nervous.

I read the memo and said, “The captain wants a confab. Think he'll pay me overtime?”

Doug said, “Think he'll give me a raise after I play Tom Cruise in court? Ask him for me.”

“Sure, Doug. In a horse's patootie.”

At my desk I gathered my purse and jacket, shoved a couple of folders in the drawer, locked up, and went by Joe's office on my way to the parking lot. I told him where I was headed, and he smiled like he knew what it was all about as he pushed back his chair and locked his hands behind his neck.

“You've heard something. Is he going to reprimand me? He and the sheriff are waiting to hand me an unpaid leave?”

“Paranoia becomes you,” Joe said.

“Why would he be wanting to talk to me now? Our meeting's tomorrow at nine.”

Joe shrugged, said, “Who knows? Get out of here. I'll call you tonight. We'll watch the game together.”

“Deal. I buy the pizza.”

“No argument. No pepperoni, either.”

On the way over, I kept thinking about how Morris “Monty” Blackman was not going to have to pay enough. Monty was the one who put things in motion. He was the one who gave opportunity to the likes of Switchie. Whatever they got him for, it wouldn't be enough.

I was thinking these things, wondering if, on a more positive side, the captain had better news, clearer developments from some other source, to offer me today. But why would he be telling only me? What about Joe and Les Fedders and my direct superior? There was a fifty-fifty chance, I figured, the news would be bad. I calculated how many months I could live on my savings. I'm canned.

When I walked into Captain Exner's office, Agent Vogel was sitting in one of two chairs in front of the captain's desk. She was wearing a yellow dress under a brown jacket, her shoes a bright yellow too. At the end of her sleeve was a big brown bracelet painted with miniature suns, and she carried the same small purse I know she stole off some teenager in her house.